I used to spend too much time on writing. Sometimes it took me a whole day to write a post of only 500 words. When I look back on these days of toil, I realize the actual writing had only cost me around an hour. The other hours were devoted to staring at the screen and relentlessly editing the article. My mistake? I had mixed two writing processes:

the writing process

the editing process

I think the second process is easy to get started with. It feels like a job that has to be done. A check mark in a box. But the first process, the writing itself, is a different matter. That’s what they’ve invented procrastination for. That’s why there are so many web sites and magazines about productivity. Coming up with the right story and words is incredibly hard.

No, let me rephrase that. Getting in the flow for coming up with the right story and words is incredibly hard.

I used to allow all sorts of things to distract me while writing. My phone and desktop notifications were obvious culprits. But the biggest distraction of all didn’t seem like a distraction. Actually, I thought it was part of my productive behavior.

Well, no.

Because there’s nothing more distracting during the act of writing than editing.

I behaved like a menacing editor

You might recognize my old behavior. I wrote a sentence and hit the period key. But before starting a second sentence I already found my cursor back at the second word and replacing it with a better synonym.

I kept repeating this. I behaved like a menacing editor criticizing every sentence seconds after I had written it down. No wonder it sometimes took me a day to come up with a short blog post.

By separating the writing and editing process, I’ve become an effective writer. No more staring at blank screens. No more cursing at my text. I get in a flow and the words just come streaming out.

De Correspondent consists out of two parts: the journalism company and the technology company.

(For those of you who don’t know us: we’re a Dutch journalism platform, raised a world record-breaking $1.7M with a crowdfunding campaign and now have 28,000 paying subscribers – €60p/y.)

The technology company and editor is called Respondens and at some point we hope to market this and use the revenue to further develop the technology for De Correspondent (with which it has an eternal and free licensing deal).

On this blog, I’ll publicly research our (often extremely well-funded and succesful) competitors. I’ll gather documentation about these companies, link to articles about them, probably write a couple of thoughts about their strengths and weaknesses. To see if there’s a chance that we can bring Respondens to the market.

Why do this in public?

Wildly succesful marketing author Seth Godin once said: “The act of writing is what moves things forward.” Writing about this research forces me to rephrase the incoherent thoughts in my mind into clear stories you should understand.

Moreover, by doing this publicly, I embrace the chance that some of you might point me to CMS’s I hadn’t seen yet or come up with better ideas about these competitors.

So here goes part 1. I’ll start with an obvious one. My blog has run on it since 2006 and when I was the digital editor of NRC Handelsblad, we used this service to build its news site nrc.nl: WordPress.

I’m looking forward to the next version of WordPress, specifically because of the new theme: Twenty Fifteen.

Earlier this year I ditched my handmade theme, because there just wasn’t a way to keep up with all the requirements that come with people using hundreds of different screens for accessing your blog.

I mean, I love to geek around with WordPress Themes and CSS, but doing it just as a hobby isn’t enough anymore to guarantee every visitor of my blog a good experience.

So I opted for the default WordPress theme and thus making sure my blog would always be up to date and in sync with the latest responsive design, microformats and SEO technologies.

The problem is though that I find this current theme – Twenty Fourteen – a bit too heavy on the black, which gives it a clunky feeling. I wanted a more lightweight theme and it seems TwentyFifteen will perfectly fit my needs:

WordPress has just released its fourth version and named it after one of my favorite jazz musicians: Benny Goodman. I love how WordPress is improving media embeds, since it’s one of the major advantages of the medium blogging: combining a ton of different media types in your publishing. Here’s a showcase:

Now is a great time for another Movable Type. Writers would love a way to push serialized content straight to tablets, and the experience would be a boon to readers. Tablets are the best way to read, and Newsstand is the equivalent of RSS for non-geeks.